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Is Peace Truly Possible in the Middle East?

It seems near at hand, but a lack of political will blocks the path.

Crawford Kilian 24 Jan 2025The Tyee

Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.

The news in the Middle East is so good, it looks as if peace might break out any moment.

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire. They have already exchanged three Israeli hostages for 90 Palestinian prisoners. More exchanges should follow.

This news comes after the people of Syria have ousted former president Bashar Assad and seem to be cautiously putting together a new state representing all groups — even Assad’s former security people.

Let’s consider Gaza first. Suppose that the ceasefire lasts for some months. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces have routinely attacked sites in Syria and Yemen, as well as attacking Iran and conducting a northern-front war against another militant group, Hezbollah, in Lebanon.

We can expect such attacks to continue, despite the ceasefire and the change of government in Damascus, if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government thinks they should. A renewal of hostilities in Gaza itself will always be just around the corner.

With the ceasefire, Palestinians are already returning to their homes in Gaza, both to clear the rubble and to find the bodies of their loved ones.

But the cost of rebuilding Gaza, according to the United Nations Development Program, would be US$50 billion.

50 million tons of rubble

A report in Time magazine says 50 million tons of rubble (along with buried bodies, unexploded ordnance and toxic chemicals) would need to be cleared — and then put somewhere else in the Gaza Strip.

Perhaps some oil-rich Arab states would be willing to invest in clearance and rebuilding, but they would expect genuine peace and trustworthy Israeli and Palestinian governments. The government of Israel certainly won’t tolerate Hamas remaining in power, and the Palestinian Authority would likely be incapable of the task. Any new Palestinian leadership would have to be supported by its own people and by the Israelis — an improbable achievement.

Or the Israelis might simply annex the Gaza Strip and move the people of Gaza out. That idea has been proposed by far-right members of the Netanyahu government like Itamar Ben-Gvir (currently out of government) and Bezalel Smotrich; Netanyahu himself has called the idea “unrealistic.”

A ‘New Gaza’ for Israeli settlers?

A third of Israelis support the idea of annexation, and some Israeli settlers support a “New Gaza” plan, a movement to replace the residents of Gaza with settlers from Israel who see the Gaza Strip as “part of Judah’s inheritance.”

Even if annexation is a non-starter, the Israeli government will control reconstruction. In the rebuilding and staffing of Gaza’s schools, universities and hospitals, the government of Israel would have a veto over anyone suspected of anti-Israel views. That would sharply reduce the pool of replacements for those lost in the war.

Israel’s government has routinely blocked imports to Gaza that might be “dual use” — that is, used for military as well as civilian purposes. Those items have included wheelchairs, water pipes and filters, basic medical equipment and electrical cables. Even toys in wooden boxes. Rebuilding infrastructure would require a wholesale lifting of such bans.

On top of that, the government of Israel is shutting down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East at the end of January. That will mean an end to food distribution, medical care and the refugee camps in which most Palestinians in Gaza now live.

As a result, the Gaza Strip might well remain in ruins, its population dependent for everything on UN agencies and NGOs ill-equipped for the job.

Many would emigrate from Gaza at the first opportunity, joining Palestinian refugees in Arab countries like Jordan and Lebanon. Some may also move farther to the Americas. Canada is now home to at least 50,000 Palestinians, the United States and Honduras each have about 250,000 and Chile has 500,000.

The Palestinian diasporas in such countries would persistently remind their governments of problems in Gaza. That in turn would create sharp domestic conflict between supporters of Palestine and supporters of Israel.

Meanwhile, an Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has taken over in Syria after a half-century of brutal Assad governments.

And an Israeli government group, the Nagel Committee, recently urged that Israel sharply increase its military budget and domestic arms industry.

Why? In part because Turkey, which broke off relations with Israel soon after Oct. 7, 2023, exerts considerable influence over the new Syrian government. The Nagel Committee warned that Turkey could turn Syria into a client state, expanding Turkish influence in the region.

A military confrontation with Turkey is certainly possible, because Israeli forces have long been operating in Syria. Israel destroyed much of Syria’s military hardware after the fall of Bashar Assad, and even attacked a Hayat Tahrir al-Sham convoy recently.

Cheaper to rearm than to establish peace

So we may well see a ceasefire in Gaza, perhaps a long one with a complete exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. We may even see Donald Trump broker the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia — a process interrupted by the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

But Gaza is more likely to be annexed, or left a wasteland, than to be rebuilt as a self-governing Palestinian society. Hamas or some successor group will continue to operate in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

Turkey may become the outside threat to Israel that Iran used to be, obliging Israel to ever more military spending. It will be politically far cheaper for all sides to rearm than to establish a permanent peace in the Middle East.

We should also bear in mind that wars continue in Ukraine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar — to name just a few. They too need resolution, but the international community seems to lack the political will to end them.

In a time of climate catastrophes, wars are a dangerous squandering of resources urgently needed to keep people fed, sheltered and healthy.

The Roman historian Tacitus famously described a chief of the Britons who said of his Roman conquerors: “They have made a wasteland and called it peace.”

Those words may be our epitaph as well.  [Tyee]

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